


Engineering Success

by Anonymous



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Can't Stop Thinking About It - Character A Hears Character B Talking About Sex, M/M, completely self-indulgent nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:28:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23744584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Generally speaking, Tony doesn’t give a crap about the fumbling sexual exploits of college kids.However, this was Peter they were talking about here, and Peter had a way of making Tony interested in all sorts of things he would usually find painfully boring, like attending a high school graduation ceremony, or an undergrad science conference.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 30
Kudos: 188
Collections: What Fen Do (Instead of Going Outside), is this thing (an)on?





	Engineering Success

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intoxicatelou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoxicatelou/gifts).



> This has been translated into Chinese by AriaArioso, here:[【授翻|铁虫】Engineering Success|工程计划通✔️](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24239227)

Tony doesn’t mean to overhear, he really doesn’t. He’s minding his own business working in his lab, and Peter walks in apparently oblivious to his presence, talking in what Tony would generously qualify as a stage whisper at best. 

Really, the kid is a bonafide superhuman. He should be better at this.

“No, Ned, it wasn’t like that,” Peter is saying. “Honestly it was over so fast I didn’t even have time to notice - ” Peter finally seems to clock Tony’s presence.

Far, far too late for it not to be painfully obvious what the kid was talking about.

“I’ll call you back later, okay?” Peter mutters, and hangs up.

The best course of action would probably be to ignore the whole thing, but Tony can’t always help himself. Especially not when it comes to Peter.

“Everything okay?” he prompts.

“Yeah, fine. Sorry. Didn’t think you’d be here this early.”

See, generally speaking Tony doesn’t give a crap about the fumbling sexual exploits of college kids. However, this was Peter they were talking about here, and Peter had a way of making Tony interested in all sorts of things he would usually find painfully boring, like attending a high school graduation ceremony, or an undergrad science conference.

As far as Tony can tell, Peter acts pretty normally for the rest of their lab session. Tony on the other hand finds himself constantly distracted by the thought of some (as yet) unnamed co-ed popping Peter’s cherry. Worse, apparently he or she did a shitty job of it, if Peter’s side of that phone call was anything to go by.

“Do anything fun this weekend?” Tony prods.

“Nah, not really. There was this party on Saturday, but I didn’t stay long 'cause Saturday nights are kinda busy, patrol-wise.”

“You know the city isn’t going to collapse into chaos if you take a night off, right? Enjoy the whole college experience gig, try to have a little fun every once in a while.”

“I did have fun.”

“Mmm, didn’t sound like it based on that phone call.” Whoops.

God bless how pale the kid is, because his face goes beet red almost instantly. Tony isn’t super proud of how much he’s enjoying the sight.

“You heard that?” Peter says.

“Yeah. Speaking of which, we’ve gotta work on your information security awareness. Just because you’ve got the snazzy super-hearing doesn’t mean everyone else doesn’t have ears.”

Peter ducks his head, looking pretty dejected, and suddenly this isn’t so fun anymore.

“I didn’t think I was being that obvious,” he says.

“Yeah, you were. Bright side though, it all gets better with practice,” Tony says. “And yes, I did mean that as a double entendre, if you were wondering.”

“Oh my god.”

Peter buries his face in his hands, which was not the reaction Tony was going for. He was hoping for a laugh, maybe, or even just a snort. He would’ve been fine settling for an amused snort.

Tony kicks away from his holo-display, rolling over to where Peter is perched on the edge of one of the tables.

“That was supposed to be a joke, kid. A bad one, but still - unless you’re hiding your face because you’re embarrassed for me?”

“I’m embarrassed for both of us right now, actually,” Peter says into his hands.

“That’s fair.”

*

Tony refrains from bringing it up again, but that doesn’t stop him from thinking about it. Some little turd out there had the audacity not just to plow his favorite and only mentee, but didn’t even take the time to do a good thorough job of it.

Peter deserves better.

And better is what he’ll get. Tony isn’t sure how, exactly, but that’s all just detail work. 

First, he needs some additional intel.

At the next tech conference, he makes a point to introduce Peter to every attendee under the age of 30-ish, with FRIDAY along for the ride to take copious notes on micro-expressions and other response indicators. Peter is friendly to all of them; excited to talk about their work, consistently making eye contact, asking relevant questions, which of course makes it a little trickier to pick out the ones he might have more than an academic interest in. 

His good manners are making this far more difficult than it needs to be. Tony blames May.

That’s not to say there aren’t a few clues. Peter is polite, but he’s still (mostly) human, and there are some people he is noticeably less interested in talking to. Mostly, Tony notices, the ones who have boring or otherwise gimmicky-sounding research. Tony has to grin at that. _Good boy, Pete_ , he thinks.

It takes a bit of work, but Tony teaches FRIDAY to distinguish between what he’s come to think of as Peter’s ‘academic interest’ face and his ‘possibly a fuck-me’ face. Awkwardly enough, the two are incredibly similar, and Peter tends to switch from one to the other in the span of milliseconds, depending on the subject.

Tony learns a couple of critical pieces of intel from that trip:

One, that intelligence and wit have significantly more of an impact on Peter’s attraction than gender seems to. Two, that there was a small but statistically significant uptick in Peter’s interest in people closer to the upper range of the age group as opposed to peers closer to his own age.

Mostly for shits and giggles, on the second day Tony bumps up the age range of his data set. His fledging theory is a bust though, Peter’s ‘possibly fuck me face’ occurrences fall somewhere between that of his peer group and the 25-30 group. 

Maybe he needs a larger sample size.

Or maybe his analysis is too reductive. Age and gender are such broad and possibly useless parameters to determine attraction anyway, especially for Peter, who seems to go for a pretty decent spread across all variables so far.

Tony rattles off a list of parameters for FRIDAY to include in her data set. Height, face shape, body type, hair color, facial hair, plus anything else she can think of, really. 

“Or you could ask him yourself,” FRIDAY suggests.

“I don’t remember programming you to be cheeky.”

“You didn't. I am programmed to adapt based on user interactions.”

Yeah, okay, so Tony walked face-first into that one. Whatever. 

“This is supposed to be a covert Op, FRI. I’m not asking him because that would defeat the purpose.”

FRIDAY doesn’t respond, although a moments later she’s throwing data up on Tony’s screen for him to review. The sample size is still pretty small, so the results are hardly conclusive, but a few things become clear.

Peter has an affinity for brown hair - and long too, if they were looking at women. Height preferences were all over the map, and thus functionally useless. He liked facial hair on men, but only if it was well-kept. 

_No mountain man beards, got it kid_ , Tony thinks to himself.

It's still a pretty broad spectrum, but it's a place to start.

*

There’s no such thing as a perfect match, of course. The best Tony can do without dipping into hired escort territory is to introduce Peter to some promising possibilities and let things play out as they will.

Reeva is tall, gorgeous, and is currently neck-deep in some pretty interesting targeted gene therapy research at Cornell. She ticks every box, at least as far as Tony can tell.

She and Peter seem to hit it off immediately when Tony introduces the two.

A week later Tony asks Peter about her.

“She’s really cool! She talked me through like, the cliff’s notes version of her research and where they are in the current experimental trials.” 

Peter goes on and on about the research, but there’s no mention at all about future coffee date plans.

Tony mentally crosses Reeva’s name off the list.

Martin is next up. He and Peter shake hands awkwardly, and seem to have a decent enough conversation about the best sandwich joints in Queens, ending with Peter telling Martin he had to get back to his problem set.

Wow, ditching a potential hookup to do math homework.

Tony doesn’t wait a week to check back on that one.

Dylan strikes out next, and then Paige. Then Tamika, and Robbie, and Gordon. Actually, Gordon turns out to be insufferable enough that Tony preemptively ushers Peter out of the room to save them both from that experience.

“Mr. Stark, are you... trying to set me up?” Peter has the temerity to ask, after yet another prospect has been summarily dismissed. Tony doesn’t remember the names at this point, so sue him.

“What? Why would I do that?”

“I dunno. Why would you?”

*

The setup attempts go noticeably worse after that. 

Peter takes to referring to each one emphatically and repeatedly as a _friend_.

Tony is glad the kid has so many new good friends now, but he desperately wants Peter to have the experience of having his brains fucked out of him, for reasons that he can’t quite put into words. But if Peter's reactions to Tony’s efforts are any indication, Peter doesn’t seem to want the same.

“FRIDAY, what good is a ‘fuck me’ face if he doesn’t actually want anyone to fuck him?” Tony asks, idly.

“Perhaps the qualifying parameters need further adjustment.”

It’s a possibility. It’s also possible that after one frankly disappointing fuck, Peter has decided it isn’t worth it, which would surely be a shame. Peter has decades of fun sexcapades ahead of him, it’d be such a waste for him to give up now. 

Besides, Peter never gives up on anything that easily. Why should sex be any different?

In light of the thus far disappointing results, Tony switches tactics.

“Engineering is like art,” he says to the kid the next time they’re in the lab together. “If you do it right. You want to take your time. The quickest way to get something done isn’t always the best, especially if you’re new at something.”

Peter shoots him an odd look, but nods like he’s taking mental notes.

“And it’s always okay to ask for a little help, if you’re not sure about something.”

“Uh huh. What if - um. What if you think you’re done designing something, but then it turns out you have more designing to do?”

...Well. Okay. There's a little tidbit Tony probably could have gone without knowing, but then again, he did just tell Peter it was okay to ask questions.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Tony says. “Even if a first pass feels like it’s perfect, there’s pretty much always room for improvement, if you have the stamina to take another go at it.”

Peter nods, swallowing.

“And if you ever need a little advice, I’m around, and I’ve done a lot of engineering in my time, so you’re not gonna surprise me with anything.”

“You seem pretty sure about that,” Peter says.

“That’s another thing that comes with practice, kid.”

*

“So... say you’re engineering with another person,” Peter starts off, and then hesitates like he’s waiting for Tony to confirm that they really are having the conversation that he thinks they’re having right now.

“I’ve done some of my best work with other people,” Tony offers.

That is not, technically speaking, true. But then again neither of them is actually talking about engineering right now, so it hardly matters.

“And like, the other person thinks the project is done, but you still think that there’s a lot more you could do.”

“Did you try telling this other person that you thought the project required more work?”

“I tried to, but I’m not sure they understood? Or like, cared.”

“They sound like a pretty shitty engineering partner, in that case. Find someone better to work with.” Wait a minute. “We’re not talking about the flexibility of the armored panels on your suit, are we? Because I’m not done with those either, for the record.”

“No! No, it’s definitely not you. Or the panels. It’s not the panels.”

*

Tony fast-tracks upgrading the panels anyway. Just in case.

*

Micah, Evie, and Amaan all come up goose eggs as well. 

FRIDAY is still collecting data, because why not, but Tony has mostly given up on the hookup generator. Peter doesn’t seem to like any of his prospective options anyway. Maybe Pepper is right after all, and attraction can’t be so easily quantified. Or even not-so-easily quantified, given the lengths Tony has already gone through.

“I could revolutionize the online dating industry with this, you realize,” he tells her.

“You could. Or you could stop being insane and ask him out yourself.”

That’s hardly the point of all this, and he tells Pepper so. “That’s not the point. I just want him to have a good time.”

“Of course you do.”

*

Peter doesn’t ask any other engineering questions for a while after that. 

Or rather, he asks actual engineering questions, which Tony answers, but he doesn’t ask any ‘engineering’ questions. 

Or at least, Tony sincerely hopes that none of the questions Peter asked were about anything non-engineering related, because if so Tony has given him some incredibly detailed and almost definitely unhelpful explanations about abrasion resistance measures and heat distortion points.

In hindsight, he has some doubts about that abrasion resistance conversation. But... Peter is smart. He might need a little advice here and there, but he wouldn’t need to have the importance of proper lubrication explained to him.

Today is different though - Peter works on his own projects for a while, but keeps rubbing his palms on his jeans like he’s nervous about something. Tony waits.

“I had another question,” Peter says. “What if you want to work on something with someone, and the other person like, knows a lot more about engineering than you?”

Tony stops what he’s doing. “I’d say that’s a great opportunity to learn.”

What he would also like to say is that Peter should definitely tell him who this other engineer is, so Tony can run a full background screening and make sure they’re up to snuff, but he’s pretty sure that conversation would go over like a lead balloon.

“But what if they don’t want to be held back, working with someone who isn’t on the same level as they are?”

“If someone doesn’t want to work with you, they don’t want to work with you. But anyone who thinks they’re too good to work with you isn’t worth your time. Has this person given you some reason to think they think that way?”

“No, just, they might not even be interested. I’m still not sure.”

“Hate to break it to you, but there’s only one way to find out. You gotta ask.”

“Okay,” Peter says. “But what if they’re like, really oblivious about it?”

Tony winces. “You sure you want to try inventing anything with this person? Nothing I’m hearing here is making me think this is a good idea.”

“I’m definitely sure. I’m just not sure if they’re sure.”

“Then ask.”

*

It seems like it should be simple enough. Peter is a pretty outgoing kid, but there’s only so many people with _extensive engineering_ experience in his life that are possibilities here. 

Tony can easily discount a significant portion of that list based on general interests and physical resemblance to previously rejected candidates. He flips through the remaining profiles for various neighbors, classmates, and friends of friends. 

There are a few in that group that seem like vague possibilities. There’s a strapping young TA for Peter’s OChem class that looks like a pretty good bet. Hell, if Tony himself were just a little younger, he might’ve - 

“FRIDAY, you got anything for me?” he asks instead of following that train of thought to the inevitable conclusion. 

“No matches available at this time within the given parameters.” 

Damn.

It’s probably the TA anyway.

*

Peter does the thing again two days later. Not the pseudo-engineering question thing, the 'talking on the phone about his attempts at sexual exploits and not noticing that Tony is in the lab' thing.

It doesn’t seem to be going much better than the last time, either.

“I’ve already been _really_ obvious, Ned. Either he’s not interested so he’s ignoring it on purpose, or I’m so far outside the realm of possibility he hasn’t even noticed, because he wouldn't consider me in a million years.”

Tony doesn’t catch whatever Ned is saying on the other end of the line, but whatever it is, Peter is rolling his eyes.

“Dude, I’m not doing a bend and snap in the middle of the lab. I don’t think that works in real life, anyway.”

Tony’s eyes narrow. So it is the TA, then.

But also: god help Peter if he’s at the point of taking advice from Reese Witherspoon movies.

Tony clears his throat and Peter jumps.

“Uhh - how long have you been sitting there?”

“Long enough to tell you that you’re gonna want to grow your hair out and invest in some heels if you really want to make pencil drop move work to maximum effect.”

“Oh god.”

Peter bids a quick goodbye to Ned and hangs up.

“I never really pegged you as the hot for teacher type, but I guess you never know what you never know.”

“I’m not hot for - wait, what?”

“Roger? Robert? Renee? The OChem TA, starts with an R.”

Peter frowns. “I don’t have the hots for Matt.”

“Alright fine, whoever you’ve been jonesing after. Spit it out, let’s get this over with so we can move on to getting you laid properly this time.”

“Is there any particular reason you’re so invested in this?”

“No.” There isn’t, not really. Tony gets hyper focused on some new project approximately every three weeks. Sure, the thing with Peter has gone on a lot longer than that at this point, but since they’ve had zero success indicators yet, so it’s not entirely surprising that he hasn’t been able to let it go. “Just trying to help.”

“No other reason?”

“Nothing comes to mind.”

Peter sighs.

“What? Hey, if you want me to back off, just say the word. I mean that literally - you have to actually say the words, I don’t do well with subtle hints or fuzzy personal boundaries.”

“Okay, I’ll say the words. Please stop trying to set me up with literally every person you think I might vaguely be attracted to.”

“Done.”

“Thank you.”

“But since you passed on all of my suggestions, I think I get to know who the lucky guy or girl is you’ve been trying to bag.”

“I think I’m starting to change my mind actually, he’s turning out to be kind of dense.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“I’ve been trying, but he doesn’t seem to be getting it. Apparently he’s not great with subtle hints.”

Tony belatedly realizes he excluded someone from FRIDAY’s parameters that he probably shouldn’t have.

Smart. Brown hair. Neatly trimmed beard.

Tony is a goddamn bonafide superhero. He really should be better at this.

*

“You know, the thing about engineering is that there’s always more to learn, no matter how much experience you have,” Tony says.

“Uh huh, I’m getting that.” Peter reaches over and flicks a pencil off of the table. Tony watches it roll across the floor, and neither he or Peter move. 

“You gonna pick that up or not?” Tony says.

*

Peter does.

*

“So if I’m remembering correctly,” Tony says, in the brief spans of time he has when his mouth is not otherwise occupied, “the issue with the the last shlub - ”

“He wasn’t a shlub. He was nice.”

“Tomayto, tomahto. He pulled a come and go on you, I don’t consider that nice.”

Peter pulls away just far enough to meet Tony’s eyes. “Are you gonna be nice to me?”

“No. I’m not going to be _nice._ I’m going to be better than that. Much better.”


End file.
